Voice 123 is the oldest and largest voiceover marketplace on the web. In it’s time it has had ups and downs – a fundamental platform redesign a few years ago caused controversy – but recently it has rebuilt and is adding features and functionality to keep current and define the future of the Voiceover marketplace.
In this chat with Rolf, I sit down to discuss a whole range of topics around the voice industry and voice123.com, including;
Rolf’s journey to becoming V123 CEO, Where Voice123 is and where it is going, and the new features being rolled out for voice artists and clients.
How is voice 123 reacting to Text-to-speech or AI voiceovers?
What were the results of the experiment run to gauge the market response to AI voices?
What are the first areas of voice that will be serviced by AI voices?
What are some of the use cases for computer-generated voices?
Are there AI voices already on the voiceover marketplaces?
How much pushback have you had regarding your AI voice experiment?
When will we see realistic AI voices replace humans?
What is the AI revolution going to mean for novice voice actors?
What are the legal ramifications for voice actors engaging in TTS contracts?
What is the future of voice123 and TTS?
Are there too many newbie voice artists entering the industry?
What qualities are clients looking for in voice artists?
Why did Voice 123 launch ‘The Booth’?
What insights can Voice 123 give about Voice buyers?
How many new voices do you see joining and then dropping off the platform?
Voice 123 is a totally distributed workforce, what are the benefits and challenges of remote working globally?
Here is a Loooong transcript of the interview:
Rolf Veldman
Yeah. Nice to have to be here. nice segue as well, like speaking of marketplace, as well, well done with the intro. I really like that guy.
Toby Ricketts
And it’s described as the world’s first and largest voiceover marketplace. Is that right? You’ve got those two metrics?
Rolf Veldman
Yes, yes, we’ve been in here since 2003. Actually, our founders Alex and Tanya started way back when Tanya was a voice actress herself who wanted to cut out a middleman. Alex was an engineer. And they said, Let’s combine forces and others that came on voice 123. And we’re still the largest depending on what metric you use. But we’re so open.
And that, compared to other platforms, we calculate is slightly different. So the number of people on our platform is maybe the biggest, I don’t think we have the biggest revenue because we don’t try to maximize revenue on every part of the deal. But yeah, we’re the largest platform. I just network.
Toby Ricketts
Nice. Cool. So we met in a quite a funny way. Because you at the the one voice conference in 2018, on a boat, going from like one place to another across the Thames. And I think you introduced yourself as like you just started, I thought I had the impression you were an intern and voice 123. Yeah.
Rolf Veldman
Oh, that’s how I felt I was I was basically there incognito. So we are right, it was a weird time for boys 123. Because we had a, it’s been a rotation of management for a couple of years in a row. And because of the founders sort of moved out of the company and try to focus on other endeavours while still being involved in voice into three from a board-level perspective. So I ended up liking looking for new leadership, previous leaders, and they just parted ways with me. And they knew me for a while and had pitched me to become part of voice on three as a general manager, first, maybe CEO later.
And they said, but it’s important that you get to know the voice-over industry first. And then you get acquainted with the kind of people in the voice-over industry, because you really have to love this industry for you to work in it. Because it’s it’s quite particular. Right? So they send me to the conference in London, to meet up with people and to basically interact with as many people as possible, build some relationships and see if I would enjoy it and would like it. And I sort of didn’t tell anybody who I was, well, not didn’t tell, but I will try to be a fly on the wall, while also connecting with people.
And you’re the first one, one of the first I talked to, you had all these great ideas about the future of the industry and what could change and you’re very like excited about all the potential there was around I was this is this is not a stagnant industry, there’s a lot that can move. And it can change want to be part of it is partly because of the conversation I had with you. And so either people can blame or Thank you for having me as part of this industry now.
Toby Ricketts
I feel honoured. And it was kind of a masterstroke because I feel like our conversations would have been quite different. Maybe if I had known. So yeah, I think he’s got an honest opinion from me, which is, which is quite good. Which I you know, I do do have, I think one of the books of industry is like it’s so it’s such a friendly kind of industry and they’ve run, there’s no real shooting each other down. Like it’s mostly supportive, I think because like, if you don’t get that if you’re looking at the same level of someone, you don’t get the gig. It’s just because you weren’t right for the part. So there’s no kind of personal stuff in there. That’s true.
Rolf Veldman
So what sometimes my title gets in a way, though, so that’s why it was nice in the beginning. So if you have a title CEO, then people see Oh, that’s important. I also don’t know what I’m doing right. So I’m just trying to learn there. And it makes it easier if that title is not in a way no conversation. So I really enjoyed that. We got to know each other.
Toby Ricketts
Totally. No, absolutely. And it was quite a different story at the 2019 one where you stood up and people kind of threw fruit.
Rolf Veldman
You were saying friendly industry? I don’t know, felt like a pitchfork and flame kind of situation. But yeah, really depends on who you are. It was right. It was the right emotion for the time.
Toby Ricketts
Yeah, exactly. So where did you come from just briefly, like what’s your put upon a history of entrepreneurship and company running.
Rolf Veldman
So I was actually trained as a historian in the Netherlands. So that’s, I don’t think you can get any further away from being an entrepreneur than being a historian, besides the fact that if you trained to be a historian, and you graduated in my case, in 2011, is when the economic crisis also hit Europe. There were no jobs and there’s never a job application that says we need a historian unless we want to be a teacher. So that made me do all kinds of things. I worked for NGOs. I worked in bars. I did all these kinds of small end jobs to get to know what I really wanted to do and ended up in government as much as most historians do. And I realized I was Carolee predictable that was for the coming years, decades. Like there’s, as soon as you’re in, there’s a path for the next 20 years.
And it was kind of a constraining, I felt. So I had in 2015, I was in the process of becoming a project manager. And in one of the, one of the government agencies and I, I sort of told them, no, I quit, which was a kind of a great moment, instead of getting a raise, I just quit my job. And my then girlfriend, my now wife, and I decided to fulfil a dream that we had of travelling, we were in a position in a very fortunate position where we saved some money. And she’s originally from, from Latin America. So we wanted to go back there, travel around, reached Colombia after 10 months and decided to make or break Colombia, meaning that we wanted to find a job there to make ourselves sustainable there. I found a job as an English teacher, again, working at and also at an NGO worked out.
And, and most of my work until then, in governments and different companies was helping to digitalize those kinds of organizations most, back in 2000s, most people still work on paper, I think a lot of people still do work on paper and trying to make a switch to digital work was mostly organizational and behavioural change. And that’s what I did. Sounds kind of boring, quite a fun if you’re in the middle of it. And then I in Columbia I met Alex is the new one Colombian who introduced me too, Alex. So it’s very happenstance. We had a conversation, we decided not to work together straight away.
But I told him, if you ever wanted to make pictures, remote work to the next level, let me know. And I can help. So 10 months later in 2016, and joined his holding company, to build a bunch of frameworks to help him operate in a remote setting. So how to do leadership, how to do strategy and how to do project management, all these internal management stuff. So my background is mostly from a leadership training perspective. And by the time I’ve built that framework, and said, well, it’s kind of easy to tell people what to do, maybe I should try to do it myself.
And I had pitched that to, in this case, Alex, and Tanya, and the founders and they decided to train me for a couple of years, and then put me in a position invoice on two, three. It’s actually my first big entrepreneurial endeavour where I’m at the helm of a large existing company. Before that, I was mostly in an advisory role consultancy role or have part of the responsibility. And most of my training for here was on a job getting myself ready to become an invoice on the three and having a bit of remote, remote baggage.
Toby Ricketts
That sort of answered kind of vague But no, that’s that’s the engine to hear what you where you’ve come from. And I mean, you’ve come from like kind of left field in terms of like, like you say, like turning up the one voice conference, like to learn about the voice industry, to see if you want to be a part of it. And I imagine you’ve done a hell of a lot of learning over the last sort of three years. to four years, probably
Rolf Veldman
I wasn’t completely new to report because I knew to come a new company, but working in a company where voice is different than having an opinion about voiceover industry,
Toby Ricketts
right? Like a roadmap of where,
Rolf Veldman
yeah, or a vision like where should it go? So? No, no, I had to learn fast. And I think it was possible because I started from the starting point that I don’t know, right? That’s why I talked to to you. And I talked to all the other voice actors and try to talk to as many producers as well, trying to get that input, try to see what our problems, what are the visions that most people have about the future? And how do they correlate and what where’s the opportunity on a business perspective?
And that’s, I think, if you talk to enough people, a vision sort of formulates I think one of my skills if I could, as an historian, you have to absorb a lot of information and turn it into one narrative. So that skill set finally came into, into use. Yeah, absolutely.
Toby Ricketts
So now that you have had this time to sort of, you know, to ruminate and to learn what like, firstly, where is voice 123 at this moment, and like, what’s your what, what are the kind of big plans you have for it?
Rolf Veldman
But I think that’s the that’s the one question. We’re gonna take an hour for this, maybe, because that’s quite a big one to where it is. Now. I think I have to say where it was when I joined. So basically, what Alex and Tanya had done is they build toys on the train, and let’s say in 2014 15, they decided to We want to go into other other fields of work. But before they did that, they tried to create a newer version of voice 123. And the idea was to replace voice on three. And that was, what is now blending studio voice. But they thought, okay, that’s the natural progression of whatever voice into three is right now.
And then I realized those are two completely different things. We should separate them, they can exist on their own, potentially they can compete in the future, but they’re different. What the result of that was, is because they were so focused on building other companies that was on the three was basically left in maintenance loads, load mode, right. So it existed, it’s a self service platform. So voice actors and planes, they connect with each other, what we have to do is make sure that technology works, and that people are finding ways to talk to each other. But we were at that stage and wasn’t the three that if we would just want to change the copy on the on the platform, it would implode the platform. So it was so outdated, because it was built in 2003.
And we had to really go for a new version. So I joined in that process of rebuilding boys on two, three, and one of one of the things that we wanted to do is set it up for growth in the future. And it came from the idea that you if we want to build an open marketplace, where the relationship is, first and foremost, we need to provide more and more tools for the people on the platform to to basically build their business there, we always had in mind, a version of whatever Shopify is for small business owners, we should be that for business owners, and an even smaller levels, which are basically creative freelancers, right. And they manage their own business. Bo intrapreneurship is a very common term there. I think it’s slightly misused. It’s, it’s always about marketing, but it’s more about managing a business yourself.
And we wanted to build a platform that was able to add more and more and more tools to it. And that’s where we are right now. So we’ve launched the new version in 2019. And we stabilize that new version. Now for the next couple of years, it’s all about adding new functionalities to this platform for our in this case, boy is creative, but that’s too small of a market, there needs to be more for them to do more extract more out of their own, out of their own industry, position them at the front, instead of being a middleman like many other platforms. So there’s this big transactional model, we don’t want to go there. We just want to be a market true for a marketplace that acts as a network where people can connect.
Now, practically, that means that we need to think about tooling for for admin, from voice actors, like it’s wild to me that most people still work on a spreadsheet. Whenever they do their finances and do their taxes. It’s wild to me that most people are focused on finding a first client when the way to stay in voiceover, in my opinion, is to nurture the second client the second time you work with the same client, right? That’s how you stay in voiceover. So we’re going to set people up in a way that they can really manage their own career on voice 123.
Toby Ricketts
That’s, that’s very interesting. Cool. That’s, that’s, that’s cool. Because I mean, there’s the shortest version. Yeah, absolutely. And I’ve noticed, I mean, I’ve noticed these little bits of functionality being rolled out, like, I mean, the most obvious one is the where clients can pay, and you know, you hold the money, and there’s a job, you know, through the platform, as opposed to just putting people in touch. And they sorted out between themselves.
Rolf Veldman
Which is I guess, tending towards the more that the other models, the other platforms do, there was a there was a huge decision for us, because we always thought, okay, we should never do that, right? We build our and we look too much at other companies in the industry saying that’s what they do, we are different than we realize there’s always a use case for it. Right? There’s, there’s, there’s certain kinds of companies that buy voiceover at a very high volume, they don’t want to pay 25 times a day, they just want to pay boys on three and us to release that money to the voice. So we tried to do it at cost. And that’s why our fee is so low.
The other part of that is there’s always going to be a connection with a client that you might have never worked with, and you want to have a sort of a guarantee for it. So maybe in that initial transaction, you’re going to use this. And so we realized as long as we make it optional, then we never make it an obligatory thing on boys on the trade to have to use this, then it adds a service. Yeah, became a bit more open-minded on what we could should and should not do. I think that’s a big change compared to the past.
Toby Ricketts
Hmm, absolutely. And, like it does give more power to both the client and the voiceover artists like me, it is a definitely I’ve definitely felt pressure from clients who just want to pay with a company credit card, which is quite hard. If you’re not set up for it as a new voiceover. It’s very hard to take credit cards without stripe accounts and all that sort of stuff. So it does streamline that which has been really useful. And yeah, I’ve seen some of the other sort of modular functions that have just sort of repeated out and I was quite excited to see on the I was like going through all of the different parts that I didn’t even know existed of 473 and there was like they were good at not being very cool. about what we’re doing. And there was like the rollout of staffing, I think you’re referring to the stats page mean?
Toby Ricketts
That is that actually is that live now,
Rolf Veldman
the stats page know that that’s what we’re working on now, again, not within now with the idea to just say this is how you’re working on 123. But and not just to show, okay, these are how many likes your auditions got, but also like, Hey, this is the money that you made on 123. This is the average budget that your market is in. And this is the average budget that let’s say, if you’re not an animation, we want to be in animation, this is what’s happening, always something tricky. So we want to be really transparent about what’s on voice on to three people to make a better decision about that.
Toby Ricketts
It’s brilliant. I mean, and it’s good to see what features are coming up. Like there was also the like sample transcripts, the video files I was really interested in because I’m all about video on those days. And, and endorsements obviously has already happened. And that’s been really big this week on voice 123. The other big thing which segues beautifully into my next topic is AI voice character, which is would you like to have a digitalized version of your voice.
And that’s all it says leave us a comment. And you did an excellent webinar, I think about six months ago, possibly longer ago with you from gravy train UK, about the future of voice with regards to TTS and what voice 123 was doing in that space. And I was, I was really like taken aback. I was like, you know, I had no idea that this was happening in the space and what you were doing. But it sounded really interesting. So for those who haven’t heard what the experiment kind of was, do want to just bring us up to speed and tell us where it’s at now.
Rolf Veldman
So, again, I’m an historian, so I’ll go one step further back. But basically, when I joined in 2016, we already told each other Okay, there’s an existential threat to the voice over industry in a way that we operate our business, right. So voice 123 is a marketplace where the more voice actor there are, the happier shellder shareholders are, because that means there’s more revenue. Right? That’s the simplest version of what it is. So if there’s AI that can computerize all of these voices, will that take away a part of the market? Or how will that behave? And is that going to be a threat to the way that we do business on voice 123.
So ever from the start, I had my eye on this. And I figured it might potentially be as big as what we were ourselves in 2003, where I felt that becoming a digital platform in very much local network oriented industry is going to be quite disruptive, is AI going to be the same thing? I didn’t want to be on the sideline. Looking at it. I would prefer to make it as transparent as possible. But hosted on was on two, three, because I wouldn’t mind being a place where if it happens, it happens. With that in mind, we I’m looking at and I was looking at AI a year ago thinking okay, it’s most likely going to have an impact on certain verticals of voiceover. So like ivrs, it makes sense, then that might be disrupted by whatever AI voice is, right.
But what happens if AI goes into promos, right short form problems, where and commercial work? That’s where money is being made by voice actors. And we’ll go there, how much does it cost to run an AI program? For the people that have those AI models? We think it’s very cheap. It’s actually still very expensive. It was a year ago, and it still is now what mom? When do they become profitable? Meaning? Is it even viable that it’s become if it adds to the space? Is there a new potential for AI, and meaning a whole new category of types of voices and types of voiceover work? All of those questions we had, but I can only hypothesize of it. I could only talk to people. And I don’t, I didn’t think that was enough.
So what we did in in six months ago, is that we thought How about you start showing it to the people who decide what the future of AI is going to be? And it’s the people who buy the services. So we figured if we can have like 10 to 20 of AI profiles on voice 123. And they’re just public profiles, everybody can visit them. They’re purely AI voices. So they have a playlist or a couple of samples in there. And how about in our project form? When clients ask to receive additions, we ask them? Would you also like to receive a AI version of an addition? If they toggle Yes. And then whenever a client requests 50 proposals, we send them 50 plus one AI. And then afterwards, we ask them are good.
Did you think it was would you ever hire and this kind of voice? At what stage would you hire it? If it not good enough? What would you pay for it? And what would you use it for? And I figured if we have all that information or six months of work, and we make that public, then if you’re a voice actor, and you’re building your business on corporate vo and all these clients as I’m going to use it for that, then you know that you need to change your game. But maybe these clients are telling us no we’re going to not going to use it or I’m going to use it to get a taste of Boys, then it’s sort of changing auditioning. Forever, right? Instead of us auditioning 90 times to get a job, maybe what clients really want is to have a tasting a script of us, like-minded sounded voice for, let’s say, low acting type of gigs.
But then there, maybe that’s where it’s gonna go. But the nature of that experiment was finding out that information and making it public. And then my personal end goal there is, of course, people start to equate boys on the three a bit with AI, right? the secondary is, ideally, by the time voice actors are ready to record a version of their AI version of their voice, it happens with partners that we recommend, because as with any business, they’re, let’s say they’re morally right or morally wrong. Businesses, people that take advantage, or people that don’t. So we want to set us up as to be basically the network that enables what is essentially the future of VR, in my opinion, and that is where AI plays a role. And it goes into so that report is being is, is already in data, but it’s not already in visuals.
So we’re still working on it. But ideally, we’re publishing it within the next two to three weeks. And based on that report against any scoops, yeah, yeah. And I will I will, there’s a speaker, I think, I think one of the things is that, like I mentioned already, IVR is very obvious. What the thing that was scary to me, was that so we asked, everybody could say Yes, that is right. And only one or 2% of our clients enabled it. So I mean, that’s very low section on it. And even within that small section of clients whenever we had an open field of leave any of their comments or feedback, and most of them said, Hey, this is a threat, don’t do this. We need to predict a voice actor, how will payments work.
So I love that there was a sense of we need to take care of the people. So perfect. But the scary part about it was that they also collectively said, we’re never going to pay more than $1 a minute. Which, depending on the type of work that’s going to be quite impactful, of course, is biased because AI is just not good enough right now, but it will be in a year or two from now. So the prices will go up, I believe, based on this report that AI will work just as a new category in voiceover world where you have your premium talent, and you have your standard AI voices depending on how well you’ve recorded it, you can start selling it at a higher price point. But what I learned is they want to use it for roughly three or four kinds of things.
Very standard ones are a ivrs, and placeholders, especially in gaming, right where it is an early develop game. And we need a couple of voices to really get funding for this game. That’s when we use it. But again, like an animated placeholder, yeah. And I think that’s how gaming studios set up their business as well. Like you want to create a character for a game. Part of that is the creative voice of that character. And ideally, these gaming companies want to have an AI version, because that’s real-time. But there’s a very small market. The other part is, is translations. So I assume you don’t speak 20 languages, let’s say do bless Bless you. But it would be nice to get to a stage where we’re going to hear a Dutch version of you, right? And potentially you can hear Yeah, the technology again, is not there.
But that’s the biggest requested feature so far. Like I could use this if I need to do a promo in 20 different languages, I can just work with one actor, right? There’s convenience. And the other part is short form promos, meaning five to seven seconds. Audio specifically on mobile. It goes very specific but mobile is the fastest growing segment in audio and video. The fastest growing type of advertising under market tiers is five to seven boys five to seven-second piece of content, video or audio and that’s where AI most likely will sit.
This is for like Amazon products, isn’t it because it’s a new field is like these five to seven seconds like product summary videos I’ve heard, which is we might be so might but it’s also on, on your streaming services on whenever you play a mobile game and you have to pay for like you need to pay for an app or get the ad. That’s where a lot of these will be. Yeah, right. Yeah. And I think there are two, two or three ways that our voice actors should work with, with a will go and really deep already, but I just want to also be excited about this topic. So this is one way where which was my original plan.
But so far, there’s only limited demand for it from the client side and that is, let’s say, you Toby. You want to cater to those to those gaming markets or you want to cater to to more short-form low-acting kind of projects and you can Do versions of your voiceover. So let’s say you have wizard, Toby, you have conversational Toby. And those are just characters that you have on your own website, I as a client, try that script, I upload a script, like a download that. And it is always a watermark.
So I cannot download it without your approval, you approve. And there’s a licensing structure for us to both benefits from their salt. That’s one way to do it. So actually licensing per character. But technology is getting already good enough that you as a creative, whether you’re the director, or the voice actor can already play around as if it was a desk, up up the happiness or the sadness of the voice, etc, you can already go a bit further leaves the oven
Toby Ricketts
pole in terms of the Wii and yeah, absolutely.
Rolf Veldman
So you might not have to have to recreate all these different kinds of characters, but you can just have one voice and work from that. And then the licensing structure still works in depending on what it’s for. less so. So imagine you have you want to do an audiobook. And you want to have certain the beginning and the end, you want to have real high quality. So let’s say that’s you. But there are also sections in that book where it’s fine for you to use an AR version of it. So you can do a mix, part of this project, because of the fast turnaround time, and you already get this done. I’m going to do part of that is going to be AI Toby, and then the other part is going to be real-time. There’s one way to do it makes and the other one, which might be the most offensive.
And the most offensive is I think that it will, it will replace a section of auditioning because auditioning is where the work is right. auditioning is where you commit and your pitch and you do your work as an actor, you own your craft. But I really sense that there’s a large section of clients when you don’t know what quality is. I was also a new three’s industry. I don’t know what is good. I need somebody to tell me what is good. And it’s already sounding better than what I sound like. So okay, let’s go for it for this project really depends if it’s a big commercial or a big branded project, you won’t do that. But 40 smaller businesses. And let’s say it’s an in-house, corporate vo video or corporate training that exists for one time, I’m going to use an AI version of that.
So the and I want to, instead of wanting to interact with a lot of people, I’m going to just check what they sound like in the AI and demo. So it might be a marketing gimmick, it might be a way to convert people into introduce a lot of people to your voice without you having to audition constantly to everything. That’s one way I think I can see it go. And like all of these kind of functionalities, we want to test on voice 123 with the voice actors that wanting to work with it. So they can be beneficiaries of it. Because the worst version of all of this is like a Shutterstock or AI. Right? Yeah. Where you just have a catalogue of AI voices and you pay $29. And you use that AI? Yeah, yeah. I mean, of course, that’s always going to be before there’s going to be that company is going to exist.
Toby Ricketts
But ideally, arguably don’t like Yeah, kind of fill all of the kind of like, we can get into the details of you know because it is around us already. There’s the sort of speech demos and you know, everything that’s based on Taka Tron true, which is like, you know, the overall sort of the one that they developed, which has quite a distinctive sound, because it’s not it doesn’t produce audio at full range.
It doesn’t it’s limited to about 32 kilohertz, I think so you can hear that it’s kind of it’s, it’s, it’s limited in terms of its frequency range, from a processing angle, just that they you know, they designed it on that kind of platform. And at the moment I’m hearing the odd YouTube explainer video where I’m I think it’s real voice and then something will happen. I’ll be like, that’s not a real voice. Now look, listen closer on it’s Yeah, it’s very good. But it is only an AI voice. And so like weird, or a version of it. That’s like these descriptors, right, this script is basically your voice.
Rolf Veldman
And then it’s our edited with AI. Right? Just go for the Google example. All right, two years ago, we saw profiles on voice 123 where it’s just a person using a program to audition
Toby Ricketts
with it, right? And just yeah,
Rolf Veldman
people and I, I’ve talked to people, when they’re more plays, they already see those use cases, we have to check them in and say, okay, use your real voice or state that you’re not stating you’re using software to do this. But from the voiceactor side it is already happening. And we already ended the suspicion that you had about YouTube is what a lot of people in the last three to four years from the client side have been asking us about that. This addition seems fake.
This seems fake. That seems even though it’s not fake. But it’s why it’s one of the reasons why I think the conversational style of voice over is now so popular, like a very natural opposition to it because it’s the hardest one to crack. Yeah, and it’s the easiest To recognize as definitely being human.
Toby Ricketts
And it’s very interesting. I’m actually just going back to like your your test that you ran for six months. Did you expect that there would be kind of some kind of outrage from the voice of a community? Because you were sensitive? And no, Do you get any pushback?
Rolf Veldman
So I we we tried to go with great for the brain going workshop, would you make a plan a lot of talks that week, because I figured the way normally information spreads is it spreads through these kind of awkward communities that exist everywhere, whether it’s Facebook, Reddit, or or whatever group people are talking whatever forum people are talking about, even if we put something a wide banner on voice over three. So far, people don’t go for the news about vo two voice on day three. So we wanted to make it alive in those in those communities by going on those talks, I expected a lot of pushback. And there’s only pushback when people see voice on three does AI experiment. What they then see is the ruining industry.
But it’s of course, it’s a bit nuanced if you have the context, okay to try and expose where AI might change. And they’re being transparent about what what is what is happening and what’s coming out of it. And they’re going to share the report with everybody. Then, okay, dentists are starting to make sense. So we got limited pushback, until I think three weeks ago, four weeks ago, suddenly, there was an uproar in a couple of groups, and we were spammed, with people being really angry at us for doing the experiment.
We sat down with the people that were not explained hate, this is what we’re doing. And then it was okay again. But so far to push back has been not as wild as I expected. Because I also think people understand that vo is not a static industry do changes. And this is just an exchange. If we do it correctly, it could be a change for good.
Toby Ricketts
I mean, I often compare it to the taxi industry, turning into the Uber industry turned into the self driving industry. And it’s quite similar with voiceover in terms of it used to be agencies studio, you know, LED. And now it’s kind of voiceover marketplace LED, and says, you know, the next logical step is the AI thing. But there will still be people that drive cars for hundreds of years. And you know, it’s not going to replace everything.
But it will be interesting to see where it does sort of infiltrate, if you like, and where it does sort of right and where it is the best solution. Because I mean, the place I’m really sold on TTS is like dynamic TTS within gaming. Because you can create these worlds where you can meet like a stranger. And they’re literally like an AI stranger, basically a chatbot. But in a game, which actually talks and actually reacts the normal thing. But you know, you don’t have a voice actor voicing like, you know, 80 million words of script.
Rolf Veldman
yeah, there you go possible. And you, you must have already also done maybe in your work dynamic audio ads, where they want to depending whether it rains, sunshine, or where you are going to want to run that ad. And you do need to record hundreds of lines for a 10 second ad, like that’s another place where AI can solve that. Right, but it has to be short for them even. And in those games. I think people accept it because it’s a fictional realm. Right? So it’s okay, that the voice also sounds sort of foreign. But you also, I think, especially in educational content, you see a change, where in the past, the people recording, creating educational content, were all about the content and not the performance.
And in the recent years, or most more educational content. Companies realized that the quality, of course, is not only determined by the content, but by the medium of the content. So a well-performed educational course is way better than an educational course it just is content stream that you write. So while you could say, okay, people need to just absorb the information. Yes, let’s use AI. There are companies on the other side, it’s not this needs to be highest, highest quality content. We need a proper actor here that really does the work. So like you said, there will always be work in vivo, or human. I always I feared at the beginning, in your to stay within your metaphor of the car. That may be human. VO was a horse, right? And an AI was the car but i don’t i’m off that truck.
Toby Ricketts
It’s good. And so where do you see that? Is the cutting edge of AI voice at the moment because we’ve kind of we are still in the uncanny valley a little bit of voiceover and that the closer it gets to reality, the kind of creepier it gets, when you realize it’s not. It’s not real voiceover Do you think you know within a year or two, we will have genuinely unpickable you know, voiceover at least sort of straight voiceover in inverted commas rather than adding too much emotion at this stage. But we have that in many places already.
Rolf Veldman
But right and your ears, your ears, there’s an uncanny valley to experts here. There are But most people consuming AI are not experts. Most people consuming audio are not experts. So a lot of content is already being created that we don’t have to go over that threshold for most of the content. I tried to, whenever I talked to either my, with our potential investors or with other partners, I always talk about a very simplified version of it.
But let’s say if you if you do voice acting, on a scale of one to five, five being, acting, acting, for being acting, acting, and then three being okay, acting, and then one and two is minimal acting required, then that’s where we can already the AI is already solving those problems. And I don’t think maybe because of gimmicks, AI will, will, will attack the category of like proper acting, required vo but I don’t think in the long term it will maybe as a as a hype, because AI is cool now, but in long run, and in one and two, it’s already is using, it’s already there, but it’s just too expensive to run proper AI. Boys always.
Toby Ricketts
Yeah, yeah. And I think like, I mean, if, you know, I, I’m, I’ve worked with a TTS company. And I’m still sort of, you know, talking to them about you know, how you train an AI to do sort of more acting like what leavers Can you pull. And because I teach a lot of voiceover like, I have enough trouble telling experienced voiceovers, like how to breathe more acting and life into this. And if if I have trouble telling another human how to do imagine trying to tell a software engineer who’s going to try and tell the computer how to do it.
Like, if you can’t actually define what the X Factor is that you’re trying to get, then it’s very hard to actually, you know, to make a computer, just do that, without, I guess, you know, having machine learning, you know, things and just showing them acting and saying this is what the act is doing now, but that’s a much more complex feat than just say, talking and matching a jerk on the page.
Rolf Veldman
So a bit imagine you, you being you’re getting the job of having having to deliver a full, full audio file or a delivered, right, you can choose where you’re going to do AI or, or Toby, but they’re equally good. And then this becomes like a super editing program, right, where you can hand certain parts of yourself, or you can give yourself just a little bit more range. And then then you can see the function, but then it requires your air and your vision for that voice as a creative to turn it into a proper voiceover.
And imagine them being the director with those kinds of skills instead of working with the actor. And if AI is good enough, I can do this myself. Now, there’s only a very limited group that can do this. And I don’t foresee any future where everybody has the ability to turn. Even though the technology is there. If you put me in charge of creating a building a commercial and then putting the right VoiceOver on it, I’m going to fail 10 out of 10 times, even with the best possible to go into because I’m not a voice actor, I’m not a producer, I don’t have that air.
So I’m desert, it’s already here. But there’s always a use case for people who are well trained in a craft. And you having that a unique ability, not even getting your direction out of your head, is allowing you to be in the center of this whole creative process anyway. So I think it’s always going to be and I think voice actors keep forgetting that when they’re always the most expert person in the room when it comes to voiceover when they work with clients, right, so most clients are not in the voiceover industry. They just need a voiceover. But as a voice actor, you’re always the expert. And if you’re able to leverage that expert position, then AI is like a super cool tool.
Toby Ricketts
I do worry that like the breeding ground for voiceover actors who, you know, I want to start being a voiceover actor, I’m gonna get myself a home studio and I’m gonna put myself out there has been these small jobs, which don’t require much acting like getting runs on the board, doing IVR, doing explainer videos, etc.
I do want to know that that’s going to cut off not know exactly the supply, but it’s going to know shattered the dreams of a lot of people and who just won’t get that lowest tier. And finally, I mean, I don’t know what fiber voiceovers, you know, because that’s, that’s traditionally the, the the the sort of position survivors occupied is that kind of, you know, lower fees, you know, lower amount of acting required, etc.
Rolf Veldman
Normally, you’re 100%, right. And there’s a lot of people joining the industry now, I think, at a higher pace than ever before, because actually, the biggest revolution of the last couple of years has nothing to do with technology, it’s the reduced price of hardware. Right? It’s easier to set up a still expensive, but it’s way less expensive than it was to record a voice at a minimum required quality in your home. Some people do it with phone, that’s not good enough to me, but for others, it’s good enough.
They just want to have the acting style or you can buy a very minimal minimalistic mic for a couple of 100 bucks. And that’s how you can get started in the industry. So those obstacles have been removed. No AI will most likely sweep in and take most of those low-learning jobs. So people get disappointed earlier, and they might need to step it up to get to stay in industry? Well, yeah, I think those trends are, it’s going to be interesting to watch them happen simultaneously. Logically, you would say, AI is going to be the fiber of the future. But I have no idea whether that’s gonna be the case.
Toby Ricketts
So I want to get back to newbies and training and stuff, because you’ve got a new guide that we’ve got released this week, which is really useful, but I just want to stay with TTS a bit, because like, we both have passions, very passionate in the space. And people want to know, what’s what’s keeping you aware of any AI voices or TTS companies that have effectively, you know, gone that they haven’t trained their voice on a voice actor, so they haven’t had to make any moral decisions. They haven’t had to train it for the 1000s of hours of voice actors. They’ve literally just made one that talks. Are there any digital first AI is that you’re aware
Rolf Veldman
or where people tried it? It’s incredibly shit. So you record it. Sorry, for the language, you record it TTS yourself. Right. So that’s not a that’s quite hard? Because it’s very consistent performing. For Yeah, it’s a skill that you need to have. And then we see the server. Yeah, yeah. So we see companies that, that just want to get a set of audio and then train a model. And that model almost always doesn’t work. Now, there’s a couple companies that might get better at it. But so far, all of them have to add more make the moral decision to work with doctors.
And they will continue to do so I think. But I think it changes right now. It’s kind of a weird vibe. So you got paid for that TTS project? Right? Basically, what? Sorry, I’m not trying to insinuate anything. Most people get paid for working on a TTS project, especially as for a brand. Well, that makes sense. But now people also get paid to train a model of TTS. Right. So what is 8000? Yeah,
Toby Ricketts
I was gonna say entered to just go further on that it often says like, your voice won’t be used at all in the final recording, but it will sound exactly the same as your voice like, that’s the thing that gets left out,
Rolf Veldman
change it change it slightly. Yeah, yeah, well, and most of these training models are so I trained is, let’s say version one of Toby. And I, the model learns from that. And then for version two, I basically need to re-record for it to be good enough. So if anything, you most likely will end up if you want to really train a model, you have to record the same version like three-four times. So they have to put in their audio constantly. The, thing where it will go is the other way around, where I as a voice actor, I’m gonna have to pay a company to record an average of my voice.
Toby Ricketts
Because that’s the flip side isn’t it? is the fact that if I am okay with doing that kind of like non-acting sort of stuff work, but I have a good profile and a good voice and a great model, then Yeah, why not make money while I sleep?
Rolf Veldman
passive income? Yeah. Well, so then it becomes a selling point. Yeah. Right. Now, it costs between five and $10,000 to do that, so there’s no way people are gonna do it, because then also running the models after it costs too much money. So, that’s something that will happen in the next couple of years.
Toby Ricketts
That’s a very interesting, what do you see? I mean, there are some clear and obvious ones, but the moral and ethical issues around TTS have been in the headlines recently with bib standing my previous guests with the TIC Tock voice scandal. And it kind of comes down to something I’m not interested in at all, which is legal issues, I hate everything to do with fine print and contracts.
Rolf Veldman
So instantly fall asleep when reading. I always think when reading kind of why don’t you use terms that I understand? Yeah. How can you make one sentence as convoluted as possible, but yeah,
Toby Ricketts
so like, like the crux of it seems to be the fact that you know, you’re hired to do something like train, train this voice for this purpose. If that company then gets bought by a parent company, they inherit the assets of that. And, you know, that’s what it sounds like happened with the TIC Tock case, we don’t know exactly what happened, but it will come out in the wash. But like, there is this issue of of not knowing where all you will go and if I create a voice model, say, then someone can make me say, like, whatever they want, how do you stop it getting misused? in the marketplace, or pirated effectively, someone pirated my voice and started selling me? I might not even know about it for a while.
Rolf Veldman
But I think there are two things there. Like you could essentially you can break down what happened to best standing as a breach of contract somehow, right? Again, I also don’t know the details but assume that’s the case where I was I was doing one thing, but it got used for something else. Right. That’s a breach of contract. And it’s even salary that have happened in this case in AI but it happens. Occasionally. It happens in all types of reo where I do it for a and it gives us for me getting past that you’re right. So if I sell my AI version of a voice to one company and they use it for other, how do we deal with that? And those, there are two items there. One is that at the same time that AI is developing the treatment of, protection and security of content is also increasing at a higher level, right?
So you can, if you start to generate your audio files, encrypt Lee in such a way that you can trace them back when being used unless it’s in an internal corporate structure, you always have a foothold on it. So let’s say it happened. Tik Tok is integrating a new voice that you actually recorded for someone, something else you can trace it back to being your original recording or your original voice, there are ways to trace it back to you. So there’s a technical protection side, in the same way, that AI is developing that can help voice actors. Then the other part is, I don’t think there’s a very standard template for contracting on how to deal with AI to make sure that even when there is a full buyout, there this still needs to be limitations, because full buyout is something that we in industry know is like kind of useless as a concept, right.
But it takes about two years to try to convince the client of how useless It really is. So you need to have the terminology buy out there and then still have a contract that is factually not a buyout, though with limitations. But I think we would have to build those, those contracts to get I would love to work with, with the union or with a company like Greg for the brain on that to have a template and strictly promoted. So whenever people purchase the services of an actor to train a model or to record a voice, they can use this kind of standard contracts that help prevent this kind of problems. But there is a use case where AI gets smart enough to turn Toby into Toby plus Rolf, and then we have 12. Right? And who owns stalls, right? So, it really did, but yeah, that might happen. I have no idea how to control that right now.
Toby Ricketts
Yeah, it’s an interesting world and lots lots, but it’s a very niche problem.
Rolf Veldman
Yeah. Yeah. That’s the tough situation. Yeah. is unlikely to be the future of AI.
Toby Ricketts
Yeah. I mean, you do meet voice doppelgangers. Like I’ve, I’ve, I have friends and family saying, Oh, you voice that new thing on TV? I’m like, No, I didn’t. And I listened to it. I didn’t think it sounds like me. But you know, like, there are people that do sound like quite like me sometimes. And you can’t go and sue them. If they suddenly we decided to do a voiceover. So Oh, it’s such a tricky area. But I mean, I like this idea of having like voice marketplaces effectively, where you could weave or servers could create their own voices and sell them in some kind of partnership program, perhaps. And perhaps there would even be a facility for people who aren’t even voiceovers to start designing AI voices. I’m not sure. But, you know, that’s an interesting
Rolf Veldman
thinking creative first. So I think right comes back to the vision I I shared earlier that if we think of the problems that are facing the industry and think about a creator, and by the Creator, I think both sides, but the specific specifically, the boys can put them at the center of this. And then if we wasn’t three can give an overview, hey, these are the companies that are AI, this is what it costs to record a voice here that changes the dynamic of how we look at AI, right, and exposes all these companies that are out there. Because at the photo community is if you really want something there quite strong.
Toby Ricketts
Certainly. So what’s voice 123 doing in this new TTS environment? Like it? I mean, you know, I guess have to tell us the entire plan now, but are you formulating a strategy based on the research that you’ve done over the last six months in this report?
Rolf Veldman
Yeah, so the idea would be to already have a character voices on on voice on 234, a group of actors this year, but I’m thinking, I’m not sure if character voices is the right way to go might be just, I also have a, just a one version of Toby on my profile was going to start with a small group. And then, depending on how that goes, roll it out to others, but that would be my ideal version. Now, there’s all these engineering complexities behind that how to make that work in such a way that people actually enjoy using it.
But yeah, I step one is that and the other. The other step is I’m trying to collect as a bad word, but I’m trying to get as close to as many AI and TTS building companies out there. And ideally, start allowing them to, to have like a football voice actors to work with them on voice on two, three, directly and open.
Toby Ricketts
Because I mean, you hold that position, then we’ve been a marketplace and having all those voice actors and clients and, and imagine
Rolf Veldman
as a TTS TTS company that needs an AI voice, you need to go to voice authority, because that’s where a voice is. And then there’s this contract in the middle that protects the voice actor. That will be like a golden situation. That works for me, like I’m not necessary. Not necessarily a revenue-driven idea, it’s more that any network effect that which was on three more at the center of you, it’s good for voisins during the long term, but that’s my, the reason why I’m doing
Toby Ricketts
Yeah, brilliant. Absolutely. Right. Well, I’m gonna pivot out of TTS to ensure that we touched on before, which is new voices wanting to get into voiceovers because you’ve got this new guide called How to get into voiceover, which is part of the booth which is kind of like your new kind of what’s the what’s it’s a resource for, for voice actors who are working already, and people are new to the industry. And there’s lots of good stuff in there.
So I encourage you to go to voice 123 dot com slash the booth and their voiceover guide is on there. What do you say to the sort of seasoned, grizzled voiceover actors? who say that you know, there is too many newbies spoiling sort of the ground? And you know, we there just seemed like, there are far too many people these days. I’m obviously not one of them. But like there is the attitude out there that we shouldn’t be training so many new voiceovers.
Rolf Veldman
Yeah, I mean, yeah, I also want everything for myself all the time. But that’s not how the world works, I guess there’s new, there’s new talent coming in. And they’re good. Sometimes they’re not good. There are people that want to work with younger people. There are people that want to work with older people, and there’s room for plenty of people in the voiceover industry, like audio is the fastest growing one of the fastest growing industry, especially in entertainment, it’s the fastest growing industry, there’s plenty of space, I think of anything, be part of that educational wave, right, don’t push people out, don’t try to keep this small corner of the VR world for yourself, because that’s how you’re going to get kicked off.
So as a old, older grizzled veteran voice actors, I think they can be very open to whatever new type of work comes in. And you can learn from how the younger ones do succeed, and vo, right. Because the to one of the other things to how vo has changed is I think it’s very clear to were quite anti agent, right? We came into existence thinking the whole agent model. Why? Right? Because it’s a closed industry that is about networks, and these agents control these networks, and therefore you have to go through an agent to go to a play, let’s get out the agent. That’s the plan. Know that. But if there’s an agent, you as an actor perform a different service than when you work directly with play.
Because if you’re an actor with an agent, you’re acting, if you’re an actor, without an agent, you’re providing the whole service, right. And part of that whole service is being able to be good at customer success. And being able to very on top of communication, when we get to see these younger, new coming, people that are not biased by how the industry works, we’re really excelling at that we want. One of the things that we realized while researching our clients is that they want three things, they want a good voice, and obviously, they want good quality. And by quality, I don’t necessarily mean high acting skills just want to have good audio quality, most of the time very consistent. The second part is that they want to have ease of work with easy to work with, I just want to have a person they can get along with.
And people are fast. Right? So that’s one of the reasons why I think not the booth is not just for younger people. I think also the next generation should be aware like that the industry has changed and what people need when buying a voice actor of voiceover has also changed if you look at our Platinum members on wasn’t the three, most of them are successful because they have some form of assistance is their partner with helping with admin and communication, or they have actually hired people to do so they created their business as a bit of an industry, bit of a company.
Now, bringing back to, to why we started with the voiceover guide in a booth in the first place is that basically, most people either want to go get into voice acting, or they want to buy a voiceover for the first time, or like me go into a conference talking to you. No idea how to shoot goats. Can you walk me through it? So we realized that for people who are using boys on 232 for the first time we shouldn’t onboard them on what voice 123 is we should onboard them on Hey, this is how the industry works. Right? This is what is required of you from a voice actor perspective, like these are all the terminology to start with. This is how you set rates. This is how you record these are minimum requirements when talking to a client ideally, that’s where the older generation helps that younger generation hey don’t undervalue yourself.
Don’t do it for 450 bucks. This is priced way more. I know you want to get started but if you set your brand to be exclusive from the get-go, yes future and then from the voiceover buyer perspective. Imagine having never heard of voiceover You’re having to run run the project management for your firm in your second week on the job. And you need to get a voiceover, you’re going to voice on three or even two voices, are we going anywhere? you’re confronted a form that says usage? But I don’t know what that is, right? or What does it mean it cost all these kind of things? or Why should I choose an accident? or Why should I choose a male or a female or non-binary? What do I do here?
So we realized that we need to build an educational space where people can learn these very basic things, while also working with more senior voice actors and exposing going to hate this is how the industry is now in a modern-day vo it’s about customer service. And it’s about audio quality. And it’s about fast reply time things is changed now, or this is how a what AI will impact. How will impact voiceover, we’re trying to, instead of feeding this kind of material to all these other companies, we try to also be a space where we introduce people to the world of you from both sides. And that’s why the booth is there. That’s what a guy to do is there and to have those basics, but also to have people updated about these industry trends that are constantly changing.
Toby Ricketts
Absolutely. I mean, it’s one of the goals of growth for the brain, of course, is to
Rolf Veldman
Yeah, you know, that’s what we always promote them, because I think they’re the best out there doing it right now. So I, I again, ideally, we would refer people in a booth to go to great photo brain to get a course right or to do a webinar on a specific function. Like we’re not going into that part.
Toby Ricketts
Yeah. And I’m like an 18 different countries. Now at some it’s kind of a worldwide thing. So we’re, yeah, I mean,
Rolf Veldman
can I add one more thing to that? Oh, yeah. It’s it’s very obvious that we never really realized. But I think what was intriguing give the vo industry in the VR world is mostly insights about clients. One reason you’re envoys on two, three is because there’s work regardless of how we, how we get started, who the people are, in the end, you’ll go to version three, because there’s work in view, and clients come to us because there’s this large database of people, I can find any voice that I want to be treated like the Google Voice. Right? The we’ve always focused, it’s kind of coaching sessions.
And it’s kind of training materials when it comes to voice actors about, I think, outdated version of what a voiceover buyer looks like. What was intriguing do is, keep people informed that this is what’s happening now, hey, conversational is not the most searched term, like get into it, right? Or we see IVR is dropping, change, or planes really like this kind of service.
When you add that to your to your portfolio when it comes to turnaround time, or are these are these are popular financial admin accounts that most companies use, if you want to work payments directly get this kind of software, I think that’s where was on three can really leverage the 20 years of experience that we have by just being more transparent and more open and educating more people about hate this is what clients want, instead of voice actors telling other voice actors will play in one’s stuff biased.
Toby Ricketts
Sorry. I mean, do you do ever release sort of sort of big data? conclusions about your sort of the clients on it? Because I’ve definitely noticed between the platforms there are, there’s a difference in the kind of clients that you each attract, because of your, I guess your different advertising and SEO, etc? Do you because sort of constantly measure that, to make sure that you’re still you know, finding the right clients, or the clients that I suppose have been become used to?
Rolf Veldman
Yeah, so thankfully, we there’s a high sense of loyalty. But if you don’t get the next type of client and I never the platform, you’re dead, right. So most of my, my focus is, and our theme should always be focused on trying to get more work for voice actors. So we’re trying to look who that new segment of of content buyers is. And that’s why we’re also looking bigger than just vo, like most people, work in vo, not directly but indirectly. So we do segment our user base, I wish I could see what the other companies have all the time. I know it partly, a lot of most of the data you can, through proper researching can do it publicly, you can you can find it.
So what is very common in vo world is that a project that’s posted on voice on three is posted on voices is posted on Bodog or is posted on other ones, because it’s basically clients hedging their bets and voice actors on all the platforms. So if anything, the kind of job that flows through through our platform and other platforms, I think you’re in a better position to make that comparison. But we can provide a data from our end but it would love to learn more from what the differences.
Toby Ricketts
Absolutely, yeah, interesting. Um, one other thing I was gonna say about your the voiceover booth is like um, what I think is really important when when talking to sort of newbies about coming into the industry is is like a reality check. In terms of like, like when you start, it is really hard and it takes ages to get that first gig, you know, I think it’s about 90 is the average 90 auditions to get a job like in your first couple of years, which is pretty accurate. So you like you have to love it first. And just do it because you love doing it as opposed to like trying to find a financial incentive.
And I think it is it is fairly, you know, realistic this, this report this guide that you’ve made, you know, which says, you know, it’s common to fail about 50 to 60 to 60, on online auditions before landing a job? And like, do you have an average sort of, I do pull stats on sort of, you know, when people join, and if they join as a free member or a premium member? And when they sort of drop off? Is that a thing?
Rolf Veldman
So, people who, especially let’s hit it, we call it the pandemic effect, right now, there’s a lot of people who bought memberships last year, and I realize, holy crap this. Right, so they’re not renewing. And we see that even without a pandemic, there are a lot of people who purchase, in our case, membership on our platform, and the first time reactive in a couple of months. They realize why am I not booking? Why am I not booking women and booking and then staring away? So first-year voice actors have a low renewal rate is what we call it internally. And that’s from the voice actor side. And, and, and, and because this industry is partly driven by fame, right? And fame. Also in vivo, we’re looking at a couple of top actors.
That’s why we have awards. Like there’s, there are all these different kinds of awards in the VR industry compared to other industries that are creative. That’s because we’re so close to the entertainment, but everybody’s looking at those people inside. If I want to be like, Dolby, I’ll be like, Am I going to be like those people? And I’m going to get there because I have a mic, why not? But then we then they realize, okay, 60 to 70 to 8090, auditions one job. And then one job is not as being like 100 or 200 bucks, that’s not gonna, that’s not gonna fly. And, and we had an influx of 1000s of users, I think, two years ago, because one video that promoted free money, right, go into view, it’s free money. And all these people sign up. And they boast and it’s all not good enough, and then they all get disappointed.
I think we’re gonna have these inflows because it’s quite of a closed-off industry and outside looking in, you think I can do that? And then you realize you can’t, I can’t talk. People told me I have had a great voice. But it’s not about that. So yeah, there’s always a high turnover rate for first time starters. But there’s also at the same time, once as a voice actor, you figured out Yes, I always need to bring in new people. And I need wasn’t three to give me leads. And I go to I go on voice I go and other sorts of do the same. Where did you stay in industries, of course, that you get those repeated flights, and you build that network, and they start to recommend you to others, nurturing that relationship?
So the first recording session together and the first deliverable, and then what happens afterwards? That’s where you stay in the industry. That’s the kind of data we have we like we only have that because we talked to a lot of people. And that’s how we see people who are successful how they are performing. With go back to your original question. Yes, we have a lot of people who get started and then get disappointed.
Toby Ricketts
There must be a lot of like, Focusrite Scarlett solo interfaces coming up? At the moment? Yeah, I think so. interface. Now, I realized that we’ve we’ve spent so long talking about TTS, we’re kind of going over time. Hopefully that’s okay with you. I’m enjoying the conversation. No, I’m enjoying it as well. Fantastic. So you are also this is completely different topic. Now. You’re also the leading one of the leading kind of voices in the application of like the new remote workforce, you know, ways of running corporations, large corporations, with a completely distributed workforce around the globe. You were doing this well, before the pandemic, I believe. Yeah. And you must have had a lot of people asking you how to do it because everyone’s had to do it.
Rolf Veldman
So yeah, no, and, and, and in COVID, working remotely is different than working remotely without COVID because with COVID you working in lockdown sucks. Whether you’re working from home or you’re working in the office, right? a lockdown is a lockdown. So I think there’s a maybe people are not enjoying remote work because of the circumstances that we are in right now. If you also have to homeschool your kids, and you have to work from home with both your partners then it’s going to be tough. But yeah, so we we have out of necessity wasn’t as built as a remote company. And every sequential company that Alex has found has also been remote. So I helped him set up multiple companies in a remote structure.
The the reason why we got to be reminded that Alex and Tanya were living in the US at the time started a company wanted to hire talent. Most of their network was in Latin America. So they tried to bring in people to San Francisco and When there were a visa visa issues, and then Okay, screw that, let’s just do a local office and then Hey, why don’t we just make a digital space where we build this company and that sort of organically grew and what we are right now we have like 12 different nationalities? Are we mostly talking timezones with all the different time zones in our in our company, and we try to build a digital structure for us to work together. And it’s basically we’re meeting most of the time, like, you and I are meeting now. And then we try to do one or two company wide retreats every year.
And we try to get teams to work together in a space because in the end, you need to also see the people that you’re working with, in real time, because right now, for example, we could be the same height. It’s number one question when we do a retreat is go to everybody’s height. Everybody get, it’s always wrong, right, because you have no idea how tall the person is. But so you have to do this kind of retreat to have super bonding, but in terms of how it changes your life, to be remote, working, like I moved back to the Netherlands, I was living in Colombia and working in the US, Colombia and the Netherlands. And the last couple of years, I moved back to the Netherlands, and work in my home office. And my lunches are with friends and family.
Like the whole concept of office work, especially in industries where you’re required to work five to six days a week, 10 hours a day six, let’s say eight to 10 hours a day, then you have a very small soldier environment. I think if you have remote work, people can come back can become active in the community. It’s fun, it’s one of the reasons why I’m so in love with remote work is it allows me to volunteer here, instead of to do recover. It’s not that I don’t love my coworkers, but there are all these beneficial items from a more workout in a pandemic. It’s been accelerating how people do remote work, and I finally was able to help other companies make that switch.
So most of the intrapreneurs that always looked at it saying you’re stupid, you do remote. At the moment, they have to go remote. How do you do this? And what, what remote work basically force you to do is you write down or you document how you work at a detailed level, not to micromanage people, but to set expectations because people work in different time zones. Don’t work away from each other as a question that country taps you on the shoulder to send you a quick text or something, you don’t want to do that.
So when we have a massive Handbook, with a this is how we work together, we have it on a detailed level of how you organize yourself in a zoom environment, right? Never camera off, that kind of stuff. So we have all these details, behaviour expectations, and how we communicate with each other. And it makes work go very efficient. guy I like efficiency.
Toby Ricketts
There’s lots of similarities. Actually, I’ve this let’s get to you say what those things are between being like a global working voiceover artist, I was thinking because like, I mean, I work in, you know, four or five different time zones regularly. So I’m like, whenever I’m conversing with someone, I’m also automatically doing the calculations and adding or taking away a day because I’m in New Zealand, which usually means taking yours was extra hard. Yeah.
So and also the fact that like, there is this like, there’s an etiquette between in communication with clients and stuff in it has to be, you know, everyone has to be on the same page effectively. So like it is it is like, having, you know, my own voiceover business is a lot like having like, like having a remote workforce, except for the kind of my clients you know, which is quite interesting.
Rolf Veldman
Yeah. And I assume especially with clients you have to set these kinds of expectations on a call because they even though they’re, they’re working with you, you’re again the expert so walking them through it. And I think the other similarity is that even though it’s a lot of fun to do all this remote work it also has the risk of being isolating a bit or there is potential to be more lonely compared to go into an office even though people in offices can also feel lonely Of course.
So that’s why I think these big conferences like One Voice Conferences are so much fun because the book to finally talk to each other and then you feel that vibe of I’ve been in his studio and I’m It’s so fun to be here and that kind of stuff. So it has other dose peaks are even higher compared to other congresses do I think if you go to a conference, let’s say in accountancy, it’s a different vibe, because there are surrounded by accounts all the time when one voice actors meet, and we get to go to those conferences.
Toby Ricketts
We’re just so excited to be absolutely, I mean, I feel like there’s so much more scope these days. Like, you know, we were talking before, you know, you live in the country, I live, you know, way out in the middle of the New Zealand jungle. And I used to live in Auckland, and like had an apartment that overlooked the Auckland Harbour Bridge. And they were always traffic problems from people trying to get from one half or come to the other. Everyone falling across the bridge just to sit in cubicles in their office and then like talk to people on zoom. And it seemed ridiculous.
It was like surely we have The technology where people could do most of this work at home, and why between the ages of nine and five, it’s like, as long as you’ve just got tasks for people to do, just give them the task, and just like your job is to solve this task. It’s not to be in the office at this time this time. And I feel like that is I think that has made a massive shift towards a task based economy as opposed to an hours based economy.
Rolf Veldman
That’s the biggest change, I think that’s for us also was the nicest change, like already weeks, a month, once years ago, we work with the concept of, Hey, this is your responsibility. This is the impact that you need to have, tell us what we need, give us your roadmap, and then you work back, it’s not a boss telling an employee say, Okay, well, maybe five, and then you do this from eight to five. And so end of the week, you need to deliver this, that’s not how life works. That’s not how your professional office space needs to work, you need to be more in control. But it’s also harder.
And because from two sides, one, I think, because of the pandemic, a lot of leaders who work and who lead from a position of control are going to feel massively in a remote setting, because they feel they’re in control when they can see people work. And, well, if you’re at home, especially with kids life happens also, you’re not able to only take a break from 10 to 1015. Because my toilet, my daughter has gone to the toilet, I need to help her out, right, or I’m just that was a rough breakfast to get to get started, I need an hour break. Like if you’re on a human level, you want to be more in control of that time with leaders want to be in control of your time, and those leaders tend to fail.
People in in remote settings from a team member perspective also tend to fail when they’re waiting. So whenever you’re working from home, you need to have a sense of productivity. And you need to have a sense of accountability for the goals that you have. And you need to really get help in the problems that you need to solve. Now, so you need to be more in control, you’re not necessarily waiting for your leader to ask you how you’re doing, or for a leader to tell you what you should be doing.
But on a personal level, you need to be very proactive. And that’s where a lot of people find it hard, especially if they’re if they’re working in industries where they’re not so where they don’t feel an expert in. So those from the changes to coordinate mix leadership, and team member behavior. And I think if you get that clear, and you hire the right people in the right place, then remote, remote work can be a lot of fun and very challenging. Actually, it could be so challenging that you have to restrict people from working too much.
One thing shows is that people keep on working. And you need to have a really clear routines like I’m not going into this room if I’m not working. I have I have on my computer I have a setting of work in a setting I’m not work, never mix those concepts or even change outfits when I stopped working to get those kind of routines going because I think there’s the risk is burnout.
Toby Ricketts
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we’ve I’ve definitely had brushes with with burnout when you just try and do too much. And so we’ve transitioned beautifully from a voiceover podcast into like a business leadership. We must wrap it up at some time. I’m having lots of fun. Is there anything that you’d like to cover from a voice 123 perspective, that hasn’t come up?
Rolf Veldman
I wanted to mostly Connect just with you. Because it’s been a while that we’ve talked. So I enjoyed Thanks. Thanks for this. I wanted to have people learn about the booth and why we have those kind of educational materials there. And I always enjoy talking about AI. I think there’s not much else that I wanted to share. No, I think there’s good.
Toby Ricketts
I’m excited to read the full report about the TTS exam when it comes out. And and the serum you’ll share it as soon as his life yeah, brilliant enters to see some of those extra features sort of come off the dev rank and get implemented. Is there any way that people can? The best way to get in touch for sort of like feature requests? Or if they have problems with voice? 123?
Rolf Veldman
It’s good question. It’s under public roadmap that you shared. You can you can basically indicated, you’re interested to be part of testing pools. Yeah. Right. So if you, if you type in your if you if you google public roadmap voice 123, it brings you to a link where you first of all, see what we’re working on. And second of all, you can leave your feedback. And if you leave your email there, then we’ll add you to a pool of those people that get exposed to earlier development cycles. It won’t be perfect because we the way that we develop is very minimalistic, and then if it works, we scale it. So what do you get exposed to we would like better functions. Totally.
Toby Ricketts
Well, thank you so much for your time today. And yeah, I look forward to connecting with you at least on a six-monthly basis and having a good because it was really nice. Thanks, Toby.
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